


souls too entwined to find peace

by lamentsofbee



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Canon Divergence, Confession, F/M, Fluff, how the film should have ended, jo and laurie endgame, taking liberties here but IT'S WHAT JO WOULD HAVE WANTED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:29:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23159329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamentsofbee/pseuds/lamentsofbee
Summary: She shouldn't have left. She shouldn't have turned him down. But she did. Jo March turned down her Teddy and then it all happened so quickly. She lost her love, her Beth and her drive all in one.But what if she didn't? What if Laurie and Amy made a mistake and Jo hadn't thrown out her letter?What if two souls truly are too entwined to ever find peace with anyone but each other?
Relationships: Theodore Laurence/Josephine March
Comments: 42
Kudos: 316





	souls too entwined to find peace

**Author's Note:**

> listen y'all. i am 100% for the feminist notion of jo not needing anyone, esp not a man in her life and that she loves her books and her liberty more than anything. believe me, i am. but saorise ronan and timothy chala-whatevs played it too well. i got too invested. and no one can tell me jo wasn't destined to meet her teddy and find out that liberty and love do not need to be mutually exclusive. 
> 
> this is shameless self indulgence, but you can read it if you want lmao
> 
> edit: if you haven't already, please donate and sign the petitions to support the BLM movement.   
> [Ways To Help](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/)
> 
> if you don't support BLM or aren't outraged by what is going on in the world, then i am not the author for you to read. i support the BLM movements and any movements that work in tandem with it to make the world a more safe and equal place. jo would support BLM and everything that makes the world a more equal place. when you find yourself in times of trouble think WHAT WOULD JO DO (and the answer is support BLM)

The day of the funeral an eery silence is found in the March house. The house that was always filled with shouts, jubilee and cheer now stood quiet and sombre against a backdrop of white. The piano music that had once drifted along the rooms is quiet, not to be heard for a long, long time.

Jo stood at Beth’s grave. Her dear Beth, her loveliest sister, her other half. And the sorrow was incomprehensive. It crashed in waves so strong Jo did not feel as Mr Brooke pulled Meg away, sheltering her sister. She did not feel Marmee and Father too move to the side. All she could do was stare straight out, above the gravestone and beg that Beth should arise again.

‘Please,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Please!’

She called upon the Lord’s name, maybe she took it in vain, but she begged for her sister’s return. She begged any almighty above to grant her this one wish and in return she would give herself. Sacrifice was nothing to her, if her Beth could live on.

‘Please…’ her cries grew quieter and she sank to her knees. Tears stained her cheeks and for the second time in her life, Jo March asked herself if this is how broken she is.

Is she really so broken that she should ask an almighty presence, one she doesn’t even believe in mind you, to turn back the clock.

The answer is yes.

She would have given everything she had, everything she knew and everything she felt if it meant she could change this cold winter day.

She had asked Beth to fight, to be loud, but she didn’t feel much like fighting herself anymore.

It’s unclear how long she stands there. Waiting for something to change. Maybe waiting for God to take her too.

But eventually she finds her way back to the attic. Beth’s sheets of music lay gently in her hands, the dolls that once were hers already packed into a box, letters from Mr Laurence stacked neatly on the side.

They remind Jo of the letters she wrote to Teddy. The fact that they are still unanswered stings.

Her thoughts are tumultuous and suddenly, where there was only empty space and the loss of a love, suddenly there is a whirlwind of thought.

Marmee asked her if she loved Laurie and her answer… it had been true…

Her desire to be loved, to be cared for. It was all she ever wanted. To find someone who could look at her, truly look and her and see her, and not look away in disgust. She knew she was not beautiful like Meg, regal like Amy or kind like Beth. She knew she did not fit into the society she was accustomed to. And although she often made a mockery of the rigid structures of their Victorian life, she too longed to be seen. And heard … and loved.

She meant it. ‘Women have minds and souls,’ it had burst out of her ‘as well as hearts. Ambition and talent as well as beauty.’ Her sisters came to mind. ‘And I’m sick of being told that love is all a woman is fit for… But I’m…’ she faltered. Her hands trembled as well as her voice but Marmee looked at her with gentle understanding. As if coaxing a cub into the sunlight. ‘But I’m so lonely.’

In that moment, the façade Jo March had created shattered. The candle with dreams, desires and endless amounts of passion had burned out.

Marmee stared at her for a long moment, her hands wrung in her lap before she finally said ‘You can be lonely and still love him.’

‘I don’t think I know what love is.’

‘Of course you do.’ Ever present was her patience. ‘Look at you, you are suffering because of a love well lost. We all are.’

Losing her Beth, it should have rendered everything else unimportant but it had done the exact opposite. It had made Teddy’s absence feel stronger. As if her hand had been cut off and she knew not how to act without it. No, she knew not how to write without it.

Marmee left her with a soft shoulder squeeze and the look of a mother in mourning but she still pressed her lips together in a comforting smile that seemed to say _You will find your way child._

-

The attic had always been Jo’s but with Beth’s absence, Jo hardly allowed herself to move from it. After a long night of staring at the ceiling behind a shimmer of tears, losing count of the days she had spent curled up, she finally took pen to paper.

_My dear Teddy,_

_I miss you more than I can express._

_I used to think the worst fate was to be a wife. I was young and stupid. Now I have changed. The worst fate is to live my life without you in it. I was wrong to turn you down and to run away to New York when in actuality I should have run away with you. To New York, to a pirate ship, to anywhere._

_If all were lost in the world… and it truly does seem that way these days, I only hope I could be reunited with you one last time. To see the smile I have sorely missed and the heart I feel akin to._

_I’m still not kind like Beth. But maybe you’ll still have me anyway._

_Forever yours,_

_Jo March_

She walked to the letterbox in the forest. It was a slow walk, one of trepidation. She had written the letter already, there was no going back now. So she placed it in the small wooden box, locked it with the golden key and turned. Surely, he would check it, wouldn’t he? He was still Teddy after all.

-

Amy’s return from Paris brought with it sick Aunt March and a feeling of doubt in the pit of Jo’s stomach. She wished she had missed her sister’s arrival. She could have dozed off in the attic, sleep always seemed to come more easily while the sun was up these days. She wasn’t though, she was in the kitchen with Marmee. Waxing over what to have for dinner as if any of it mattered anymore. All her food tasted like uncertainty.

Amy entered garbed in black. She opened the door with her arms slightly wide as if she expected something to happen. But the house was still. There was no music, no laughter. Tears filled her eyes as she made her way to the kitchen. She hugged Marmee tightly whispering apologies _I should have been there, it was horrid of me. I should have known something was wrong._ Marmee, who had amazingly found her inner strength again so soon after such a terrible loss, looked bravely at her now youngest daughter and shook her head. ‘It was not what she wanted.’

Jo watched her mother with revered curiosity. Perhaps Marmee’s steel strong disposition had been awakened again with her daughter’s cry. _One day_ , Jo thought to herself, _I shall be like Marmee. Patient, yet unyielding to the world._

Amy sat at their tiny kitchen table, her black gown entirely too big and fancy for their dreary common house. Her lips began to move and she told them of Rome and then Paris. The stories seemed to spill out of her, unstoppable. Aunt March had fallen sick several weeks ago and her recovery, although promising at the time, had been halted by her immediate desire to return to home soil. The doctors had warned her against traveling so soon while the sickness was still taking its course but ever stubborn, Aunt March refused. Now being nursed by her staff in her manor, Aunt March is bedridden and traveling had taken a toll on even her angry spirit.

As Amy mentioned Laurie’s name, the breath hitched in Jo’s chest. She willed herself to breathe normally and slowly started counting her inhalations. She felt she was in something of a trance. Amy waxed on about fights with Laurie, about not wanting to be second best to Jo (at which Jo could only look into an empty corner) but still loving him because it’s _Laurie_.

Jo’s heart rate quickened when Amy spoke of a kiss and she knew she wouldn’t last much longer. How was anyone ever meant to navigate this foggy world of feelings if others were constantly adding to the fog with their words? She smiled humourlessly to herself and thought _Such is usually the occupation of a writer._ The conversation continues and Jo seems to be the only one missing the subtext and sadness in her sister’s eyes.

‘I thought perhaps someday I would be able to call him My Lord – .’

Amy’s sentence fades out. There is a beat, no one says anything. There is a pang, one that strikes Jo directly in her heart.

Amy looks at Jo with worry, knowing her wish will never come true. Without being fully aware of what she is doing, Jo rises, wiping her hands on her dress. ‘I should call on Aunt March.’ She wills herself to make a joke to cut through the tension. She almost does. _Someone has got to make sure she hasn’t beat the bush._ It’s on the tip of her tongue. Yet, she holds it. It’s still too soon. Too soon after Beth’s passing. Death doesn’t seem like a joke to her anymore. It seems like a thief. And thieves are not to be joked about.

-

Seeing Aunt March in bed, her duvet perfectly folded and a duck feather pillow behind her head, leaves Jo with a feeling of melancholy. As if she suddenly realized that even the strongest, most resilient women must give way to the tides of time.

‘I have come to read to you, Aunt March.’ Jo says quietly from the door, a faint smile on her lips.

Aunt March only gives a short nod in return after which her eyes wander back to the big window looking out onto the grounds. Jo reads to Aunt March for a while but it becomes clear that her aunt is not listening. Her glassy eyes stare out at the garden with unmistakable sadness.

‘Your Amy did a fine job in Europe,’ she mutters in a croaking voice.

Jo halts her reading and looks up, suddenly feeling chastised. ‘I knew she would.’

She looks down to continue her passage but Aunt March interrupts her.

‘She was made for high society.’ The old lady’s eyes stop on Jo judgmentally. ‘Unlike some I know.’

‘I do not wish to become decoration to a place already filled with frills and flowers.’ Jo answered simply.

‘No, you do not.’ An honest statement. ‘Just like your father.’ Another. ‘Penniless and useless.’ Aunt March huffs, her eyes linger on the door. As if she were hoping someone else would walk through it. As if she were craving more company.

‘I do wish to read to you, Aunt March.’ Jo says, only then understanding the old woman’s loneliness.

‘It would have been better if that ghastly Laurence boy hadn’t given her false hope.’ The pain in Jo’s chest awakens again. Not knowing where to look Jo faces her passage again, waiting for her aunt to continue speaking. She does not.

Quietly, instead, Jo continues to read until Aunt March falls asleep, her breathing shallow but constant.

-

Darkness was already falling when she left the big manor. The rooms felt hollow and empty. Aunt March’s rigor and strength seemed to have been leeched from the walls. Tonight the skies are clear. Jo trudges through the town with familiarity. Here is the town she grew up in, a place she knew she wanted to escape but always felt too attached to withdraw completely. After all, here was her family. What remained of it. Yet now, with Beth gone and Teddy unresponsive, her little home felt more like a prison. A gilded cage full of forget-me-nots and memories too precious to forget but too precarious to dream about.

Out of habit she passes the Laurence estate looking to her right, swallowing the hard knot in her throat. She walks through the woods between their homes and only stops briefly to mourn the words she poured into her letter, the honesty and vulnerability she would have to reclaim. She couldn’t let him find the letter. Not if he intended to make a wife out of Amy.

Jo’s steely determination had her walking towards the little post box. She had always put her sisters’ lives before her own. She would not stop now simply because of her infatuation for a boy. Even if that boy was Teddy.

But there was a figure already standing by the tree. Tall and lanky, Jo would recognize him even in the darkest of nights. She hadn’t the courage to speak up, so she simply stopped in her tracks and watched. If all that she had created in her head, the life they could live and happiness they could have, was to fall apart, then she should be allowed at least one moment of heart fluttering before it happens. He sinks to the ground, his hand covering his mouth. She is unsure how he would even be able to read in this dusk but she is certain he has managed.

His shoulder falls against the tree trunk heavily and for a moment she thinks his eyes are filled with tears.

She dares not to speak. She thinks she may not be able to find words anyway. Instead, she hangs back and watches as he rubs his face and gives a sigh as if he were the loneliest man in the world.

They hover in silence for what feels like eternity. Jo isn’t even sure that he knows she is there and then, a sudden panic rushes over her. She can no longer watch him. A short but loud gasp for air has him looking in her direction and clambering to his feet quickly but Jo is already on her way. Her brain feels fuzzy as if her senses had reached out too far and tried to take in too much. She begins to run, though where she is not quite sure.

Unaware that the person she tried to leave behind is following her, she stops short when she is breathless and a little ways away from the grave. _Of course,_ she thinks. _I always find my way back to my compass._

‘Jo.’ His voice is quiet and husky as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time.

This time the tears well in her eyes.

She allows herself one inhale to steady her breaking heart (again, it’s breaking again) and turns with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘Welcome home, my boy.’ She says.

For a long moment they stand and merely look at each other.

‘I –‘ but she beats him to it.

‘I hear of your impending nuptials. Congratulations.’

‘No, you misunderstand.’

Unclear if she had heard him or not, she continues. ‘Amy was full of vigour when she spoke of Paris. It seems you left quite an impression on her young heart.’ She’s speaking to the ground now, unable to meet his eyes. ‘Though you have always had your ways with young, impressionable maids.’

‘I only ever cared for one.’

‘Amy will be happy to hear th - .’

‘I am not marrying Amy!’ His voice is booming, her eyes look up with uncertainty.

‘Just for once, could you stop thinking you know everything and just listen?’ He begs.

‘Amy and I made a mistake. We were both wrought with grief and _you weren’t there_.’

She thinks he will begin a monologue but after a short silence instead he asks her a question. He takes a shaky breath.

‘Why didn’t you write to me about Beth?’

The knot is back. The one that sits in her throat and hinders her breathing.

Still, she can’t look him in the eyes. Her embarrassment is too great.

‘You hadn’t responded to any of my letters thus far. Writing to you about Beth seemed folly, like bait. I knew you would respond if I did but only out of loyalty to Beth, not out of loyalty…’ her voice breaks. ‘To me.’

‘I deserved to know.’

‘You found out through Amy - .’

‘I deserved to know from you.’ 

Her eyes flash and she feels a lick of hot anger in her stomach.

‘Deserve? Now you suddenly deserve to know? As if all my unanswered letters filled with woes and apologies weren’t suffering enough?’ Her voice grows hard. ‘What good does knowing of my suffering bring you? She was not your sister!’

It was mean. The one habit she hadn’t yet outgrown – lashing out when she felt attacked. It came too easily. She sees on his face that he feels no joy in her sorrow. He feels broken and beaten by this loss as much as she does. He too had loved Beth.

His words are so quiet, she almost doesn’t hear them. The way his voice shakes undoes her.

‘ _I miss her._ ’

Tears run down her face.

‘I miss us.’ She answers, the presence of the gravestone heavy at her back. ‘All of us. When we were younger and didn’t have a care in the world.’

She takes a breath. ‘Beth was the best of us.’

‘She was.’ He agreed quietly.

‘We need to be better for her.’ She feels tired as she looks at him, as if this conversation had taken everything out of her. Suddenly, he realizes she is missing her fight. His Jo is lost in the sea of her mind and sorrow.

‘Do you regret turning me down?’

It had to come to this. She knew it had to come to this. But speaking of it was too soon. Her heart still ached and she felt so young and stupid and at the same time so marred by the world. She tried to answer in a way that Beth would.

‘No,’ she says finally. ‘Because I could not have loved you then. All I could do was crave love.’ She takes in his face and pity overtakes hers. She wasn’t explaining this right. ‘Please understand that I have always felt suffocated by the rigid structures of the world we were born into. And yet, I longed for affection and love because I just felt… I feel…’ she falters, the tears threaten to spill again. ‘ _I am so lonely. Teddy, I am still so lonely.’_

She sees him wrestle with himself. He takes a half a step towards her on pure instinct alone but stops mid-stride unsure if he is doing the appropriate thing. She continues.

‘Women have hearts and souls and dreams, just like men do. _I have a heart and soul and a dream_. And I don’t want to give any of that up simply because society tells me it is not right. I don’t want to marry out of loyalty to my Bourgeois generation or because every other woman is inclined to do so.’

He is shaking his head and this time the pity is in his eyes. For he knows how she suffers under the threat of society and he knows she could be free with him. One tiny conformity could grant her all the freedom she desires.

The words continue to pour out of her.

‘I realize now that … that women … that people have all kinds of different dreams. Meg wished nothing more than to be married to poor Mr Brookes and that has made her truly happy. But I don’t think she found happiness in an impoverished home but in the comfort of someone who truly sees her.’

‘I see you.’ He quietly interrupts.

A beat.

‘I know.’ She says back in a tiny voice.

They are looking at each other.

‘If you could not love me then, could you love me now?’

She is unsure. She still does not know if she is fit for loving and deserves the same in kind but Beth would say that there is no person in this world undeserving of kindness.

‘I will never be a good wife to you.’ He needed to know. ‘I will always be awkward and strange and vicious.’

He is nodding because he knows it is true.

‘And I may never want children. I have too much to give to this world to burden myself with raising a child.’

 _Then I will raise it._ Teddy thinks to himself. _It’s as simple as that._

It has always been as simple as that.

‘My fingers will always be ink stained and I will never slow down for you and … and …’ She looks at him, trying to come up with more excuses for her heart not to take this leap again.

‘And I will love you anyway.’ He concludes. ‘I will watch you love your writing, and your sisters and your liberty and I will only hope that you spare me a little of that affection too.’

They don’t move. They stand opposite each other, staring.

‘I told you it was your way – to care for somebody and love them until you die. Could you not let it be me? For the worst fate of my life is also if I should live it without you.’

There is a hope in his pleading eyes that was not there before.

She gathers all her courage and in a tiny voice she says:

‘I think I should like to try my best.’

A quietness entered her soul. A tranquility. The knowledge that her peace could be found at last.

Some souls are so entwined that they may never find peace.

But thankfully, these two _have_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr (lamentsof-bee) for more writing under #beewrites

**Author's Note:**

> seriously, if you made it this far you don't have to comment, you don't even need to leave kudos. but please support BLM. 
> 
> [Ways To Help](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/)


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